This is for every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality, and refuses to accept assessments, tests and evaluations imposed by those who have contempt for real teaching and learning.

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Sunday, April 3, 2016

These are the expectations of me, delineated by the demographic that holds these expectations:

The average citizen in our community:

Provide music at public events, like football games and business
openings. To represent our school before the greater (mid-sized city)
area, like the Veteran's Day and Christmas Parades downtown or providing trumpet players for taps at the Veterans' Cemetery.

The education and/or arts savvy citizens of our community:

To enrich the lives of my students with a love of music. To provide an
ability to express themselves through music and/or support music as an
expression that is crucial to the function of humanity.

The parents of my students:

To teach their children (MY children): how to play an instrument. How
to persevere through hardships. How to communicate in a professional
manner. How to interview for a job. How to keep a job. How to
network. How to manage time. How to organize and structure
responsibilities among coworkers. How to lead. How to be aware of
one's self physically/mentally/emotionally and be at peak performance to
best serve themselves and others. What empathy is; how empathy is
important. What tolerance is and why it's important. Understanding
culture. Appreciating diversity. How to apply for college. How to
find scholarships. How to succeed in college. How to audition for drum
corps. How to continue doing things they love in their adult lives.

My students:

To know how to play their instrument. To know how to read music. To
know how to listen. To understand music terminology. How to be a
professional. How to get a job. How to maintain a relationship. What
to do when no one else will listen. How to take care of your family
when the burden falls on you (a teenager). How to find acceptance
within yourself first even if others condemn you for it. To stay strong
in the face of haters. How to vote. How to create an improvised solo.
How to start a band. How to book a gig. How to put together a press
release. How to raise money. How to find a job. How to get help with
addiction. How to help a friend who doesn't have any adult support.
How to hide their orientation from their folks until they can graduate
and move out. How to get resources for taking care of a baby. How to
tell if a news source is trustworthy. How to play the chords to some
Avenged Sevenfold song. How to arrange pep tunes. How to get hired as a
private lessons teacher. To be a letter of recommendation for a job.
To be an interviewee for their application into West Point. To find
musicians for their wedding.

I appreciate every single one of
these demands, whether it be for my professional musical expertise, my
worldly experience and suggestions on “real life” or for advice from
that person who won't hold back.

I do these things as a teacher. I don't do these things as a Superhero. I am "Veteran Teacher"; I am not Captain America.

But that's not all that's expected of me. I have other demands to meet:

Various administrators over the years:

To represent my school well in public settings through my ensembles.
To represent my school well in my personal life, even if I'm not
identifiable to my school in any fashion to an observer. To assist my
students in succeeding at school-wide goals even if it means I don't
teach my content during my class to meet an obtuse writing standard. To
lose my time with MY kids that should be spent teaching so they can
instead take extra tests. To lose time with MY kids that should be
spent teaching so they can participate in extra activities because they
can't afford to take them out of their “real” classes (you can imagine
the temperature at which my blood boils at that one). To give up time
with MY kids on the day of a concert because they didn't check the
school calendar or didn't add our concert dates when I submitted them
seven months prior when scheduling school activities. To provide a
quality education but to raise the money to do so for a program that is
only 11% funded by the district almost exclusively on my own. To keep
kids safe but not send an administrator or officer when paging the
office requesting either when a child is presenting a hazard to other
students' safety or learning. To be positive even when my colleagues
who do great work are thrown under the bus or informed they are having
their program removed next year without a discussion. To be positive
when our district doesn't fight for teacher's needs. To be positive
when the kid who beat another kid's face in with a trumpet is back in
the same class with the same kid twenty days after I spent the afternoon
chloroxing blood off my band-room chairs (don't worry, I ended up just
throwing them out; the chairs that is). To be positive when I won't
have classes in my classroom because the auditorium is being used and
sorry we didn't tell you until ten minutes after class started.

Elected officials:

Stop costing money. Stop costing money. Stop costing money. Stop
costing money. Stop being a curriculum without a standardized test so
we can't monetize the performance of your students and punish your
school for performance issues that aren't based on student achievement.
Stop performing so well that if we WERE to monetize the performance of
your students you'd be a FREAKING GOLD MINE despite our best efforts to
kill your program. Stop speaking out in public forum. Stop saying
things that are accurate but unpleasant so we have to find a way to
strawman your argument and call you out in public by name but not invite
you to the podium to answer any redress unlike the peons who we invite
to sing our praises and get unlimited speaking time. Stop posting open
correspondences to public online forums so people can document how we've
lied to our constituents and falsified data when promoting an
anti-student policy. Stop sending emails on work time oh wait whoops it
was a Sunday I guess I was just trying to catch you doing something
wrong but I don't have the attention to detail necessary to catch you
doing something which we can reprimand you for. Stop giving power to
parents about the education of their child and their rights to determine
what is acceptable treatment of their child. Stop teaching the whole
child instead of the test. Stop informing people about how much money
we waste trying to bring out of state interests in to mine data from 3rd
graders. Stop informing people about the crisis professional teachers
are drowning in. Stop showing up. Stop showing up. Stop tweeting.
Stop showing up. Go away. Go away. Go. Away. Stop costing money.
Stop creating good citizens instead of cubicle-drones. Go away. Stop
costing money. Go away.

Those are some Herculean requests. I'm
only "Veteran Teacher". I'm not Captain America. I can't do all those
things. I just can't. I'm a human being, who desperately wants to
start a family, but can't right now because I get paid for 1,440 hours
of work a year, but put in 2,660. I'm a person who gets sick, but can't
see the doctor (for bronchitis and pneumonia) until 19 days into it
because there aren't enough subs to handle the two classes he's teaching
at the same time combined. I'm no Superhero. I'm a human being who
gets to school before the sun rises and leaves after the sun sets, who
creates the music the band plays on the field, the drill they march, the
arrangements the jazz band plays, the exercises they rehearse in class,
the competitive shows they take to contests, and occasionally gets to
show a kid how to survive and flourish in the real world.

I am not Captain America.

So, I am going to do the un-Superhero thing. I am not going to save
the crashing plane, and I am not going to save the crashing bus, and I
am not going to save the failed educational policy, and I am not going
to save every teacher who is begging for support but is tossed aside
because they don't earn a fat enough check for the schools once the
great testing machine determines their kids aren't poor or aren't
hungry, aren't under supported, aren't under-provided for with textbooks
and instruments and pencils and hand sanitizer, aren't from differing
neighborhoods for the first eleven years of their lives then thrust
together with no teaching of cultural competency and a fear to discuss
cultural competency because you can get non-renewed for nothing around
here let alone trying to teach anything about the real damn world to the
people who need to know about it the most: no our tests just say your
kids are failing, but only after everyone takes the test and we
determine what failing is AFTER the results are in and not when we
create the test. Nope, I am not saving that stuff.

I am not Captain America.

I am going to take care of myself for the first time in a long time. I
am leaving a toxic environment, without a plan for what happens after.
I am going to start a family. I am going to get healthy for the first
time in a decade, maybe, by having enough time to eat more than once
every nine hours and to sleep more than four or five hours. I'm going
to go to a doctor regularly instead of once a year when we get a school
holiday.

I am going to stop being a teacher for you, the good ones and the bad ones. I'm sorry, but I have to step away.

But here's the BIG problem for the vultures and sycophants to the
leeches that want to turn MY kids into cash-flow, their human
development and well-being be damned: I am "Veteran Teacher".

I
am "Veteran Teacher", and I am NOT Captain America. I am "Veteran
Teacher", and I'm going to have more time to see you face to face and
make you look me in the eye and explain yourself. I am "Veteran
Teacher", and I'm going to drag every pestilent agenda and policy you
concoct in the dark out into the light and bring the wrath of every
momma bear down upon thee. I am "Veteran Teacher" and I am going to
speak up for kids and parents with my marching band voice and I will
drown you out.